Surface water and groundwater interactions in an extensively mined watershed, upper Schuylkill River, Pennsylvania, USA

Abstract

Streams crossing underground coal mines may lose flow, whereas abandoned mine drainage (AMD) restores flow downstream. During 2005–2012, discharge from the Pine Knot Mine Tunnel, the largest AMD source in the upper Schuylkill River Basin, had near‐neutral pH and elevated concentrations of iron, manganese and sulphate. Discharge from the tunnel responded rapidly to recharge but exhibited a prolonged recession compared with nearby streams, consistent with rapid infiltration of surface water and slow release of groundwater from the mine complex. Dissolved iron was attenuated downstream by oxidation and precipitation, whereas dissolved CO2 degassed and pH increased. During high flow conditions, the AMD and downstream waters exhibited decreased pH, iron and sulphate with increased acidity that were modelled by mixing net‐alkaline AMD with recharge or run‐off having low ionic strength and low pH. Attenuation of dissolved iron within the river was least effective during high flow conditions because of decreased transport time coupled with inhibitory effects of low pH on oxidation kinetics. A numerical model of groundwater flow was calibrated by using groundwater levels in the Pine Knot Mine and discharge data for the Pine Knot Mine Tunnel and West Branch Schuylkill River during a snowmelt event in January 2012. Although the calibrated model indicated substantial recharge to the mine complex took place away from streams, simulation of rapid changes in mine pool level and tunnel discharge during a high flow event in May 2012 required a source of direct recharge to the Pine Knot Mine. Such recharge produced small changes in mine pool level and rapid changes in tunnel flow rate because of extensive unsaturated storage capacity and high transmissivity within the mine complex. Thus, elimination of stream leakage could have a small effect on the annual discharge from the tunnel, but a large effect on peak discharge and associated water quality downstream. Published 2013. This article is a U.S. Government work and is in the public domain in the USA.

Response of suspended sediment particle size distributions to changes in water chemistry at an Andean mountain stream confluence receiving arsenic rich acid drainage

“…These natural sources of metals, along with the anthropogenic enrichment from mining operations (Alsina et al, ; Bugueno, Acevedo, Bonilla, Pizarro, & Pasten, ; Leiva et al, ; Oyarzun & Oyarzun, ; Oyarzun et al, ) affect both water and sediment quality within the region. It is well known that the origin and effects of acid mine drainage and acid rock drainage are largely controlled by hydrological processes (Cravotta, Goode, Bartles, Risser, & Galeone, ; Harpold, Burns, Walter, Shaw, & Steenhuis, ; Johnson & Thornton, ; Kimball, Broshears, Bencala, & McKnight, ; McKnight et al, ; Papassiopi et al, ; Pellegrini, Garcia, Penas‐Castejon, Vignozzi, & Costantini, ; Wan, Liu, Munroe, & Cai, ). A systematic increase in the concentration of arsenic, copper, iron, and sulfate in Andean watersheds (Pizarro, Vergara, Rodriguez, & Valenzuela, ; Pizarro, Vergara, Morales, Rodriguez, & Vila, ) highlights the need to further improve conceptual models and expand datasets describing the processes underlying the behavior of dissolved and particle‐bound metal fluxes.…”

Mine Drainage and Oil Sand Water

“…Surface water and groundwater interactions were investigated in an extensively mined watershed, Upper Schuylkill River, Pennsylvania (Cravotta et al, 2014).…”

Assessing the interlinkage of green and blue water in an arid catchment in Northwest China

“…On the other hand, we are now in an era in which more data have become available for hydrological simulation at different scales (basin, continental, or even global scales) (Lee et al 2004). Although green and blue water availability can be sufficiently captured by the water balance accounting model, which requires the smallest datasets, compartmentalization of the parts of the terrestrial water cycle could have a controlling influence on green and blue water storage dynamics in time and space (Cravotta et al 2014). Various types of data allow us to construct sophisticated models that depict the hydrological processes in an explicit way by tracking all the necessary water fluxes and storage processes in hydrological cycling.…”